I love having a captive audience to test new kitchen experiments, especially when they are willing and eager to try them. A few weekends ago we celebrated a dear friend’s upcoming wedding with a relaxing bachelorette weekend down at Rehoboth Beach. Since we had a kitchen, we planned on cooking most of our meals (fine by me!). So, in addition to produce and eggs from the farm I brought with me the ingredients to make baked oatmeal.
Baked oatmeal is one of the many dishes I had never heard of before moving to South Central Pennsylvania (hog maw anyone? Seriously, Wikipedia has a page dedicated to the local cuisine!). It’s oatmeal made casserole-style, so that it’s gooey on the inside and crunchy like granola on top. Plus, you can flavor it and add any fruit, nut or grain you want. It’s an awesome and versatile fall or winter breakfast dish! But since you make it in a casserole I really wanted a crowd to feed, hence the bachelorette weekend being a perfect opportunity. Though now I just make a batch at the beginning of the week and heat up a slice each morning for breakfast.
Here’s how to make baked oatmeal:
Ingredients
- 3 C Irish thick cut oats
- 3/4 C brown sugar
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 C milk
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 C butter (melted)
- 3/4 C dried cranberries (or any dried fruit)
Instructions:
1. Preheat your oven to 350. Mix together the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. (If going on a trip, you can do what I did and mix them together in a Ziploc and finish making it whenever you’re ready.)
Make pumpkin cake from your carved pumpkin flesh
After spending several hours carving those wonderful Halloween pumpkins I was left with a ton of pumpkin flesh. Being a little green I just couldn’t... Read more
2. In a separate bowl, mix the milk, eggs, and vanilla extract. If you have given the melted butter a chance to cool, go ahead and add it to the wet mixture; if you haven’t let it cool, you’ll end up with the scrambled egg mixture I did the first time.
3. Add the wet ingredient mix to the dry ingredients, mix thoroughly. If your butter wasn’t cooled enough add it now, the mixture has enough in it that you shouldn’t end up with scrambled eggs. Stir in the dried cranberries.
4. Place the mixture in a 9×9 or 11×7 baking dish and bake for 40-45 minutes, until a crisp brown on top.
I love to pour fresh milk over a slice of baked oatmeal or top with fresh fruit, apples in particular. You can make any version of this you can imagine — add pumpkin, flax seed, nuts, fruit, you name it.
Enjoy!
Oh geeze, I’ve never heard of this, but I want it so bad. This is totally going to be a staple for me and the hubs. We’re not really morning people, but we both bike to work–an easy, hearty breakfast is awesome.
Wow, such an interesting idea! And I think I even have all the ingredients. May need to give this a shot. 🙂
Do Irish thick cut oats = steel cut oats, or are they the thick rolled oats?
My co-op has quick oats, rolled oats, thick rolled oats, and steel-cut.
Funny in light of the fact that my husband came home with steel cut oats yesterday when I actually use the thick rolled oats (I prefer the texture). I am sure steel cut oats could be used but I just haven’t tried them yet.
This reminds me of the oatmeal squares Quaker sells, except homemade! Mmm. Must try this. Usually I get sick in the mornings if I try to eat more than a bowl of cereal before I’ve been awake for several hours, so this could be a good thing to eat during my commute and be easier on my stomach.
We do something similar to this but in cookie format. I like them with dried cherries and some nuts, like almonds or walnuts.
Wow, this sounds sooooooooo good. If I can come up with a way to make it less sugary, I’m so down to make it….
I am sure you could cut down the amount of sugar and it would still be delicious. I even have friends who make a version using honey or maple syrup.
I would use Stevia. May make the dish a little less golden, but can help give it a sweet edge without adding sugar.
My work serves this daily in the employee cafeteria and I love it. They make theirs with only a sprinkling of brown sugar on top, no sugar in the actual mix. So you get a nice caramelized layer on top. They also use fresh or frozen fruit most days. I love when it’s mango day! A close second is pumpkin day when it has cubes of Japanese pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices in it.
I want to work there!
I just made this for my work’s breakfast potluck last Friday! Mine had walnuts, raspberries, chocolate chips, and blueberries. It was easy, and very well received.
Can I use old fashioned Quaker oats or does it have to be the Irish oats? If Quaker, I can make today. If not I have to shop first.
They should work fine, so long as they aren’t the quick cook variety. Since they’re not thick cut you may want to decrease the liquid content a bit (maybe by 1/4 Cup).
I made this for breakfast this morning, and the fiance and I LOVED it! This is a new fall staple for us. Thanks for sharing!
I tried it tonight using 2 cups thick rolled oats and 1 cup steel cut, I think the addition of the steel cut made it so it’s not sticking together as well. But still darn tasty!
We do a variation of this almost every week, it is so good! And my 3 year old will eat multiple bowls in the morning. I cut the sugar by about half and the butter down to a few tbs. I also do reg oats plus a cup of steel cut for a chewier texture, but if you do that it needs more liquid. It is really soupy when it goes in the oven; we double the amount of oats for liquid (3 cups oats to 6 cups liquid) but some people might like it a bit drier. And we add whatever dried, fresh, or frozen fruits we have around. Highly recommend!